Period Analysis of 3 Binary Stars in NGC 188

It is known that the open cluster NGC 188 has a multitude of variable stars. Variable stars change in luminosity over time. SIMBAD, an astronomical database, contains information on several of these stars. We have used data taken by Brigham Young University and cross-compared it to observe the period of these stars and see if data between the two match or if future data needs to be collected. To fulfill this task, the BYU telescope data was analyzed through AstroImageJ, and the light curves were constructed from the data and put into a Python script to graph the full curve of the variable star and calculate the period.  We then compared our determined periods with the previously determined periods from SIMBAD. We studied 3 stars in particular: V* ES Cep, V* EQ Cep, and V* V369. These 3 stars are confirmed to be variable stars on SIMBAD. Our calculated period for star V* ES Cep matches the recorded period in SIMBAD. We find different periods for the stars V* EQ Cep and V* V369.